


Now That I'm Older

by th_esaurus



Category: Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman, Find Me - André Aciman
Genre: M/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:51:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21888127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: I could hardly be intimidated by him, after everything.
Relationships: Oliver/Elio Perlman
Comments: 25
Kudos: 101
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Now That I'm Older

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iberiandoctor (Jehane)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jehane/gifts).

> i absolutely could not leave this prompt unfilled.

I loved his body as it was now. America had not ruined him, nor had he fought age with such severity that his skin was taut over misplaced muscle; he had sagged a little, tell-tale folds of skin on the back of his hands, the join of his ears, his knees and elbows, and a slackening of his chin that did not at all make him unhandsome. His eyes were bright, and he had a coyness about his intelligence that still made him seem aloof, as though constantly aware that he was smarter than everyone else in the room.

I could hardly be intimidated by him, after everything. 

I’m sure his students lusted after him. In his early forties, a married professor, commanding voice, twinkle-eyed and unapproachable in a way that dared anyone to try? Of course they must have yearned. He liked to be loved, I knew. He liked to linger in people’s minds, a niggling question: _ What if—? Could we—? _ Drinks after class, a poetry reading in the suburbs, an implication, insinuation—was anyone as tenacious as I had been? 

We were honest with one another now. He had not mentioned any affair, save for daydreams and malingering memories of me. I believed him; still, I suffered from a lifelong addiction to fantasy. I simply needed to guess at all the roads less travelled. 

I always tried not to mourn the periods of his life I had not known him. I had imagined them, of course: Oliver the husband, Oliver the father; Oliver, reliable and consistent, who did not surprise his wife with a secret lust for poker or stories of a summer love. But I was present for none of this, and all the wishing in the world could not change it. I thought it a sign of my age that I accepted this rather than balked against it, thrashing like a trout in a tangled net. What would be the point?

He was here. 

My mother, long before her faculties deteriorated, had turned the attic into a sort of haphazard guest room, half wallpapered, still cluttered full of storage, and with two twin beds in wooden frames easily pushed together. Now that my old bedroom had become little Oliver’s nursery first, and now his jaunty playroom, we had decamped upstairs. It was dusty and unused up here, in a way that made me feel like we were somewhere foreign. The sounds and smells were the same, though: my mother’s lemon grove, my father’s old books, and I could hear Miranda and the boy on the terrace whenever the lazy wind picked up; their peals of soft laughter, welcome joy, vivid youth.

I lay half-comfortably on his chest, and did not want to be anywhere else. If he had offered me a pillow to soften his ribcage against my cheek, I would have declined. From this angle, I could see the flecks of stubble under his chin where he’d neglected to shave the day before. He never would have been so careless in our youthful summer together. He was vain, then, and trusted me more now. 

How giddy that made me! Only my parents had trusted me unconditionally, throughout my life. Marzia knew me to be fickle. Michael did not quite believe my affection, no matter how he craved it. But Oliver had come back to the villa in B. with a single suitcase and signed divorce papers back in New Hampshire. This was unwavering trust, or abject foolishness. We were both still fools.

“Overthinking,” he murmured sleepily, his chin grazing my hair as he got comfortable against the pillows. 

“Yes,” I said. “Always, of course.”

“Of course. Tell me, then.”

“You remind me of my father,” I said. It surprised me. It was not what I expected to say at all, but as soon as I voiced the thought I knew it was true. The familiar age of his skin, his alluring nobility as a professor, his sharp intelligence and soft gaze: he was very much like my father. 

I thought he would chastise me, tell me my sickness had not abated over the years, distract me by wondering aloud if the Electra complex could manifest in a son. But he sat with my pronouncement a while. I liked this. He had matured. Not everything dangerous was brushed aside with a jest now. 

“That summer,” he said carefully, “I thought at first you wanted me for a father. That it was not love but paternity you craved. But your father was too much of a good man for that.” I nodded, awkward against his skin, but he understood the gesture. In a way he was both right and wrong. “I could not have replaced him for the world.”

“I wished my parents would adopt you.” He snorted, warm laughter in my hair. “I mean it! I wanted you as a brother, a mother, a father; as everything.”

“I let you down,” he said gently, sadly.

“No! —Well, yes. But now we may make amends.”

He stroked his palm over my shoulder; in an instant I knew it was a prelude to sex. We were quite content not to take things as far as they could go every time, but already under his quiet touch my mouth watered for his cock. “I’ll tuck you in at night?” he said. Here came the jokes, now. “Read you bedtime stories? Cook your eggs for breakfast?”

“Oh, you learnt to?”

“Don’t be rude.”

We laughed, and I rolled up to kiss him. He was quiet again, as we kissed. Deep and contemplative. 

“If I could be as good to you as Samuel—”

“You are,” I insisted. “In the same way and different, all at once.”

“Let me have something left to strive towards.” It was a strange thing to say, and I adored it. He had lived so long yearning for what he could not have - and yes, it made me buoyant to know it was me - that now he had it, he forced himself to make new goals he saw as unattainable. 

“I’ll allow it,” I said, almost petulant. “Now I absolutely must suck you off.”

He rolled his eyes in the old, familiar way. “Was this foreplay?” he asked dryly. 

“Life is foreplay.”

“Ah.”

I wriggled out of his grip and down beneath the covers. More of that lovely skin, aged by time and the sun, no longer the white, pale highlight of his ass and thighs where his shorts had saved him but an all-over bronze, muted and tired, but lovely: statuesque, and still far from ruin. I could scarcely believe my luck. 

“Elio,” I heard him say, muffled by the bed-sheets.

“Elio,” I echoed playfully.

“Stop that,” he said, lusty. “You know I can’t resist.”

“I know. Shall I call you _ Samuel _this time?” 

His stomach dipped, a sharp inhale. My impetus to push him too far had never abated. 

“Absolutely not.”

I laughed, relieved, nudging his soft cock with my nose. “I think so too.” 


End file.
